story of samarth agarwal

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The story narrated in ER class was of Samarth Agarwal, who is a former trader at Societe Generale bank in US and was charged with theft of trade secrets and scheme to fraud. Samarth had taken printout of the code for high frequency trading application, which generates millions of dollars of profit and hence is guarded as trade secret by banks and had taken the printout to his home. He also used these codes to secure a job at Tower Research Capital LLC hedge fund and intended to use it at his new job. Samarth admitted to both the charges when the codes were found at his home under search. His case seemed like a sympathy defence, but his past records were extremely clean and seemed to indicate him as a very ethical person. During his trial, references were made to similar case of Sergey Alenikov who was imposed with similar charges at Goldman Sachs, but, he had not taken printouts (hard copy) of the code. In both the cases, the code was not actually used to generate profit for Competitor Company or had caused any economic damage. In Samarth Agarwal’s case, he was not fined, but Sergey Alenikov, he was fined an amount of $12,500. Also, Samarth was sentenced to 3 years of jail while Sergey’s sentence was 8-10 years. These two stories were narrated together to highlight the above differences and the consequences of trade secrets theft although both people were imposed with similar charges. Another point was mentioned that, in these cases of intellectual property leak or theft, the damages are calculated in economic terms and the accused is charged or fined accordingly. The understanding of the two stories can be improved by narrating or role playing both the stories at a time to highlight the differences.

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The story narrated in ER class was of Samarth Agarwal, who is a former trader at Societe Generale bank in US and was charged with theft of trade secrets and scheme to fraud. Samarth had taken printout of the code for high frequency trading application, which generates millions of dollars of profit and hence is guarded as trade secret by banks and had taken the printout to his home. He also used these codes to secure a job at Tower Research Capital LLC hedge fund and intended to use it at his new job. Samarth admitted to both the charges when the codes were found at his home under search. His case seemed like a sympathy defence, but his past records were extremely clean and seemed to indicate him as a very ethical person. During his trial, references were made to similar case of Sergey Alenikov who was imposed with similar charges at Goldman Sachs, but, he had not taken printouts (hard copy) of the code. In both the cases, the code was not actually used to generate profit for Competitor Company or had caused any economic damage. In Samarth Agarwals case, he was not fined, but Sergey Alenikov, he was fined an amount of $12,500. Also, Samarth was sentenced to 3 years of jail while Sergeys sentence was 8-10 years.These two stories were narrated together to highlight the above differences and the consequences of trade secrets theft although both people were imposed with similar charges. Another point was mentioned that, in these cases of intellectual property leak or theft, the damages are calculated in economic terms and the accused is charged or fined accordingly.The understanding of the two stories can be improved by narrating or role playing both the stories at a time to highlight the differences.